First Wave of Covid-19 Increased Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke up to Three Years Later

Covid-19 infection may have significantly increased the risk of heart attack, stroke and death for up to three years among unvaccinated people early in the pandemic when the original SARS-CoV-2 virus strain emerged. The NIH-supporting findings confirm previous research showing an associated higher risk of cardiovascular events after a Covid-19 infection but are the first to suggest the heightened risk might last up to three years following initial infection, at least among people infected in the first wave of the pandemic.

Compared to people with no Covid-19 history, the study found those who developed the virus early in the pandemic had double the risk for cardiovascular events, while those with severe cases had nearly four times the risk. The findings were published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology.

The study also showed blood type may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke in patients with severe Covid-19. Researchers found that hospitalization for Covid-19 more than doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke among patients with A, B, or AB blood types, but not in patients with O types.

The researchers analyzed data from 10,000 people enrolled in a biomedical database of European patients, who were ages 40 to 69 at the time of enrollment, including 8,000 who had tested positive for Covid-19 and 2,000 who were hospitalized with severe infection between February and December 2020.

The researchers compared the two Covid-19 subgroups to a group of nearly 218,000 controls. They then tracked the patients from the time of their diagnosis until the development of either heart attack, stroke or death, up to nearly three years.

It is unclear whether the risk of cardiovascular disease is persistent for people who have had severe Covid-19 more recently.

The study was limited due to inclusion of patients from only the UK Biobank, a group that is mostly White. Future studies will be needed to determine whether vaccines influence cardiovascular risk, and on the connection between blood type and Covid-19 infection.